


In dreams begin responsibilities

by chasindsackmead



Category: Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Chess, Gen, Nightmares
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-10
Updated: 2016-07-10
Packaged: 2018-07-22 19:07:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,529
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7450645
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chasindsackmead/pseuds/chasindsackmead
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>While still an apprentice at the Circle Tower, Imogen Amell wakes up from a dream and has a disquieting conversation with Cullen.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In dreams begin responsibilities

The dreams of the outside were the worst.  
  
Imogen's earliest memory was of the boat ride that had taken her to the tower: the oars gliding through the water, the glint of moonlight on the armour of the templars, and the tower itself, high and frightening in the distance. Since that day, the inside of the tower had been her entire life. What did a forest look like, or a city, or a farm? All she had were vague ideas, culled from pictures in books and the whispered memories of apprentices who had lived long enough outside the tower walls to have something else to compare it to; intriguing, enticing, but gappy as a spiderweb, and just as insubstantial.  
  
All the same, it was enough thread for her dreaming mind to weave into images as tantalising as they were disturbing. There was a sky above her head, and some part of her mind knew that the sky was never that low, not really, and yet -- and there were trees, and they didn't look right, they looked like columns that had been painted with a bark pattern, and yet -- and there was rain, and it wasn't real rain, it was _wrong_ in a way that she couldn't put her finger on, and yet --  
  
\-- and yet, when she woke to the sight of the bunk above her and the sound of the other apprentices breathing slowly and rustling the sheets in their sleep, she wanted to cry out from the loss.  
  
She sat up and exhaled heavily instead, resting her elbows on her knees and rubbing her eyes with the heels of her hands. Control. Always, always, a mage must have control. What was it Irving had said? _If a strong man can break a person's bones in a fit of fury, a strong mage can break the very bones of the earth. And you are a very strong mage, my dear._  
  
She had never been an angry person, and it was not anger she felt now, and yet she did feel that trembling inside her that had disrupted her spellcasting so often when she was younger and less disciplined. It would burst out into ice, or flames, or lightning, and her instructors would rap her on the knuckles and tell her to master her fear; and it was not fear either. It was grief, perhaps, but grief for something she had never really had; longing for something she barely understood. If a desire demon had stood before her and offered her anything she could name, she could have turned the creature down with no struggle at all, for the things she wanted most had never been things she could put into words.  
  
Her heart had slowed down, but her back was soaked with sweat. She threw off the covers and took a wobbling step out of bed. The chest she shared with Darina, her bunkmate, had a spare nightgown in it; it wasn't really hers, but it wasn't really Darina's either. It had fetched up there a month ago, and neither of them knew for sure who had owned it originally. It was an ugly thing, grey from wear and shapeless as a floursack, so nobody else wanted to claim it. It came in handy on nights like this.  
  
She crouched down by the chest and took her nightgown off in a single quick movement, balling it up and using it to swipe the sweat from her back. Still crouched so as to hide as much of her body as she could, she flipped the chest's lid open and rummaged around, finally picking out the spare nightgown by feel. It stuck to her back a little, but it was dry, and she immediately felt more comfortable.  
  
She closed her eyes and listened. Breathing. Rustling. A slight creak of metal brushing against metal. All was as it should be, then: the apprentices sleeping (except for her) and a templar on guard, shifting slightly as he stood.  
  
How much had he seen? Was he looking at her now? The helmets they wore hid their faces and made them seem inhuman, as if there was no body inside the armour. But some of them watched, and sometimes they did more than watch.  
  
She glanced over her shoulder, doing her best to make the movement look casual. There he was, standing by the door, back straight as a poker, armour reflecting the dim light of the glowstones. His head was facing forward, not the right angle to see her. He might have been looking at her a moment ago, all the same.  
  
_I will not be afraid,_ she thought to herself. _I am doing nothing wrong._  
  
(And was that any protection, if a templar wanted to take what she did not want to give?)  
  
She stood up, stretching slowly, as if she had no cares at all. Her heart was thumping too fast and hard for her to sleep now. If she walked the length of the dormitory a few times, and nothing happened --  
  
_Nothing will happen. Nothing will happen._  
  
The flagstones were cool against the bare soles of her feet. She walked from her bed to the screen that hid the bathtubs from view, and turned, careful not to linger beside any of the bunks ( _why would she need to talk to another apprentice after dark? it must have been a conspiracy_ ), careful to walk in a straight line ( _if she had had chalk on her feet she could have been drawing a summoning circle!_ ), careful not to move her hands ( _I can't prove that she was casting a spell, but I thought it safer not to risk it_ ). She passed the templar and did not look at him, and her palms grew clammy and her stomach churned, and she reached the other end of the dormitory, and nothing happened.  
  
She turned and walked back the way she had come, a little calmer now. _Nothing will happen. I'm frightening myself over nothing. Everyone knows the First Enchanter likes me best. Even the templars know that. They wouldn't do anything to me._  
  
A few steps away from her bunk, her legs suddenly grew weak, and she disguised her collapse by swerving towards a chair and sitting in it. She had sat in the same chair earlier that day, playing a game of chess with Jowan. Jowan was terrible at chess, too impatient to build defences and too impulsive to resist bold moves that left his pieces vulnerable; and yet he had won. She stared at the board, still set up in the final position. The move before the final checkmate -- she had moved the tower to defend her knight. And before that, Jowan had moved his mage -- no, his queen. It had looked like a bad move, and she had been ready to crow over it. How had she not seen the checkmate coming?  
  
"It's the pawns," said a voice out of nowhere, and she jumped in her seat, her head turning and her eyes darting back and forth to see who had spoken. None of the apprentices were moving, and she was on the verge of summoning a simple force spell when the templar on guard removed his helmet and took a few steps towards her.  
  
"Sorry," he said. "I did not mean to startle you."  
  
Cullen. It was Cullen. She let go of the mana she had called forth and relaxed in her chair. Cullen was quiet and serious and terribly, terribly devout; not kind, exactly, but never cruel. _Safe_ , they called him, when they had to compare one templar to another.  
  
"I couldn't sleep," she said, more to fill the silence than because it needed saying.  
  
"There's always someone awake at night," said Cullen. "Up studying, or bad dreams."  
  
Imogen's hands clenched briefly into fists. Safe he might well be, but even Cullen could not be trusted with a mage's dreams. "What did you mean? About the pawns."  
  
"I saw the pattern on the board -- do you mind?"  
  
She stared blankly at him, then realised he was asking her permission to approach. It felt very odd to gesture him towards her, as if that was within her gift. He came to the table and sat down in the chair Jowan had used during their game, and she watched him wonderingly. _This is why we say he's safe,_ she thought. _Because he doesn't push, even though he could._  
  
"Pieces are important, but you have to look at the pawns as well," Cullen was saying, setting down his helmet and tapping each of Jowan's pawns with an iron-gauntleted finger. "These pawns are defending each other, and making a firm battle line that the white pieces cannot cross. Not without capturing the pawns, or leaving themselves open to attack."  
  
Imogen looked at the board, and saw it, suddenly: Jowan had created a zone of control -- most likely by accident; it wasn't his usual style -- and she had somehow managed to avoid trespassing into it without noticing it was there. And so he had managed to position his towers and mages so they could threaten her pieces without endangering themselves. "Honestly," she muttered, "I must have been daydreaming!"  
  
"My sister had the same problem," he said, smiling with one side of his mouth. "Once I worked out how to create a proper pawn structure, I was always able to beat her."  
  
"You have a sister?" He was not one of the Chantry's orphans, then, raised in a monastery from birth and given to the templars as soon as he could read. That explained a lot. If he had chosen this life --  
  
His smile faded and his face grew still. "I must get back to my post," he said, and he stood up, picking up his helmet and making as if to put it back on.  
  
"Must you?" Imogen said, raising her hand as if to stop him -- not that she thought she could, not really, only -- something had peeked through the slit of that helmet, and she did not want it to be hidden away.  
  
He hesitated, his brows knitting and his mouth growing tense. "I cannot -- I am not supposed to -- This isn't appropriate," he stammered out. "You are -- I am a templar, and I am supposed to be guarding you."  
  
"Guarding me! And what do you think I would do if you turned your back?"  
  
"It's not that I think you -- "  
  
"I'm not even asking you to turn your back!" Although she was still whispering, her voice was growing high-pitched, shrill; she wanted to stop speaking, but she couldn't. The words were spilling out of her, unbidden. "That is the opposite of what I want! I want you to face me, do you see? Show me your face and don't hide behind the banner or the sword!"  
  
"I am not hiding!" He sounded indignant. "I have a duty to perform."  
  
"And is that all there is to you?"  
  
"It is all you can know of me. I-I -- " He looked away, a muscle working in his jaw. "We cannot be friends. Not really. You will always be -- what you are, and I... I took a vow to serve the Order and the Chantry. I cannot risk that for you."  
  
"I don't want you to break your vows!"  
  
His head snapped up, his eyes staring into hers, and he looked almost hurt. He raised his helmet stiffly. "I cannot risk it," he said, and he put the helmet on and turned to walk away.  
  
"You're afraid to be a person, is that it?" she said, spitting the words out as if they tasted bitter. "Afraid to let your skin show in case somebody pricks it? Maker forbid you be weak, even for a second!"  
  
He froze, and there was an agonising silence, in which Imogen felt a slow, creeping fear rising in her gullet.  
  
"Every night," he said, his voice muffled by the helmet, "I pray that I will never have to raise my sword against you. But if that duty falls on me, I will do it. I must!" He took the helmet off and turned to face her. "Maker forbid I be weak, even for a second, if it means lives are lost!"  
  
"And you think lives might be lost because you stopped a moment to talk about your sister?"  
  
He shook his head. "If -- If I think of you as someone to talk to, then... how can I do my duty, if it comes to that?"  
  
He would not say what he meant by "that", and Imogen wanted to prod him into spelling it out. _Abomination._ If she succumbed, if a demon took her over --  
  
And if that did happen, the other mages would be at risk too, and they would fight back. Perhaps they would kill her. It wasn't something anyone liked to think about. It had never stopped them from making friends.  
  
Her stomach lurched, and she couldn't stop herself from blurting out "Do you pray for the other mages too?"  
  
His face went still, and he put the helmet back on. "Go to sleep, apprentice," he said, and marched back to his guard post.  
  
Imogen stared at him, then stared at the chess board. She wanted to upend the table, sweep the pieces to the floor, set them alight and send the burning lumps of wood flying to the ceiling. She wanted to scream, or cry, or run up and down the stairs until her feet bled.  
  
Cullen was safe, was he? Oh, yes, very safe. So safe that he dared not speak to her, lest she were to become a monster and he to find himself unable to harm her. That was what it meant, for a templar to be safe. It meant he would never harm her until he was ordered to cut her down, and then he would cut her down without a moment's hesitation.  
  
She went back to her bunk and slid between the sheets, pressing her face against the pillow.  
  
She knew what she wanted now; she was fortunate, in a way, that it was a wish no demon could grant. More than power or love or even freedom, she wanted to prove them all wrong -- the priests and the templars and the senior enchanters, all the wagging fingers and shaking heads who had told her not to trust her dreams. She wanted to walk free in the world, with or without their permission, and remain herself without a leash around her neck.  
  
She muffled her mouth with the pillow and whispered, as quiet as she could while still making any sound at all:  
  
"Maker be my witness, I will show them what a free mage can do."  
  
Something settled in her mind the way it did when she had cast a spell she had been preparing for a long time. She listened, and heard only the breathing of the apprentices and a quiet rustling of sheets; no creak of metal. Cullen must be standing especially still, now that he felt he had something to prove.

She curled up on her side and let herself drift off to sleep, no longer afraid to dream.


End file.
